HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS POISONED NAZIS

Survivors claim they poisoned many Nazis (AP-NYDailyNews)

JERUSALEM - A group of elderly Holocaust survivors came forward yesterday with accounts of a death squad they formed after World War II to take revenge on their Nazi persecutors, recounting a brazen operation in which they poisoned hundreds of SS officers.  In a broadcast on Israel Channel Two TV, the survivors recounted hunting down former SS officers at night. Disguised as British or American officers, they dragged the men out of their homes and killed them, they said. Members of the group, code-named "The Avengers," said they got a large amount of arsenic and laced loaves of bread fed to hundreds of SS officers imprisoned in an American camp after the war. Many reportedly were hospitalized but it was unclear if any died.  They said they were also planning a broad operation in Dachau and Nuremberg, but the Jewish leadership in what would soon become Israel forced them to abandon the plan.

"I didn't see myself as a murderer, not then and not today," Simcha Rotem said.  The broadcast focused on a rare reunion of the group earlier this month in a Tel Aviv suburb. With most of the "Avengers" either dead or in their late 70s and 80s, Rotem said they gave in to family pressure to recount their experiences to children and grandchildren and other relatives.  Aaron Breitbart, senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the tale of the bread-poisoning plot was plausible. "This is not a story that somebody is telling out of a hat. There was such a plan. We just don't know how close they got."